The Tao of Bowie: 10 Lessons from David Bowie's Life to Help You Live Yours

By Mark Edwards

What would David Bowie do? When life gets tough, who can we turn to for help? Who will help us find happiness, meaning and purpose? The Tao of Bowie suggests that we turn to David Bowie for guidance - and use his amazing journey through life as a map to help us navigate our own. Buddhism was central to David Bowie's life, but he was a wide-ranging thinker who also drew meaning from other sources including Jungian psychology, Nietzschean philosophy and Gnosticism. The Tao of Bowie condenses these concepts - the ideas that inspired and supported Bowie throughout his life and career - into ten powerful lessons, each with a series of exercises, meditations and techniques to encourage readers to apply these learnings to their own lives. The Tao of Bowie will help readers understand who they really are, clarify their purpose in life, manage their emotions and cope with setbacks and change. This fresh approach to the search for spirituality and happiness unites the perennial human quest for answers with the extraordinary mind and unique career of one of the most important cultural figures of the past half-century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Release date: Jan 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781760874513

Mark Edwards

Mark Edwards writes psychological thrillers in which scary things happen to ordinary people. He has sold 4 million books since his first novel, The Magpies, was published in 2013, and has topped the bestseller lists numerous times. His other novels include Follow You Home, The Retreat, In Her Shadow, Because She Loves Me, The Hollows and Here to Stay. He has also co-authored six books with Louise Voss. Originally from Hastings in East Sussex, Mark now lives in Wolverhampton with his wife, their children and two cats. Mark loves hearing from readers and can be contacted through his website, www.markedwardsauthor.com, or you can find him on Facebook (@markedwardsauthor), Twitter (@mredwards) and Instagram (@markedwardsauthor).

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INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?

The Tao of Bowie is partly a book about David Bowie. But it’s mainly a book about you.

It has a simple concept: that David Bowie’s lifetime journey of self-discovery can be used as a template for yours; that the powerful ideas that fascinated Bowie and helped to shape his work, his career and his life can help you towards a life of greater happiness and purpose; and that, by following the exercises in this book, you can pursue your own journey to self-discovery using Bowie as an accessible gateway to some of the world’s wisest teachings.

WHY DAVID BOWIE?

Bowie was one of the most remarkable cultural figures of the past century. But behind the confident, charismatic artist we all knew was a human being who started out as a young man feeling lost and isolated, unsure of his place in the world, unable to love or be loved. And yet he grew and developed to a point where he found happiness, let love into his life, and was even able to face his final illness with the equanimity and bravery that allowed him to create a final masterwork about his own death, the Blackstar album.

This is the Bowie we will examine in this book. Not the beautiful, charismatic, talented global superstar, but the shy young man battling life’s challenges – lonely, adrift and desperate for help, support and advice.

If you sometimes find life difficult, if you struggle to find your place in the world, to understand why you’re here or to identify your purpose, then Bowie’s story is your story. And you can learn from his example.

How did Bowie turn his life around? How did he grow and mature? How did he transcend the near-fatal challenges of his early adulthood to emerge stronger and happier?

We can answer these questions because Bowie was always very open about the ideas and philosophies that he used as the basis of his personal growth – the pick ‘n’ mix spiritual code that became his North Star, guiding him through his life.

If you would like to make more sense of your life, Bowie has, in fact, done a lot of the ‘heavy lifting’ for you already by cherry-picking an extraordinary collection of ideas from the world’s greatest spiritual leaders, philosophers, scientists, psychologists and artists. So much so that following his path can make your own journey of self-discovery that bit easier.

In The Tao of Bowie you will find these ideas condensed into ten powerful life lessons, each of which can help you move further along your own journey of self-discovery.

WHERE DO THE TRANSFORMATIVE LESSONS IN THIS BOOK COME FROM?

Bowie’s fans know that he was a cultural magpie: borrowing ideas from mime and kabuki theatre, championing little-known singers and bands, beginning concerts with surrealist films, mixing French chansons and English music hall with heavy rock. He was also a spiritual magpie, immersing himself in many different wisdom traditions from many different countries, eras and disciplines in search of the help and guidance he needed to make sense of his life.

Bowie studied Tibetan Buddhism before he became famous. Indeed, he very nearly became a Buddhist monk. And the questions that drove him to explore Buddhism also drove him to investigate other Eastern religions including Taoism and Zen, the philosophy of Nietzsche, the psychological theories of Carl Jung, the secrets of the Gnostic gospels and Kabbalah, the absurdist and existential writings of Albert Camus, the controversial yet influential theories of Julian Jaynes, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. And many more. These are the primary sources for Bowie’s philosophy of life. The Tao of Bowie examines these ideas, explores how they impacted Bowie’s life and then explains how they can help you.

This isn’t a gimmick. We know that the journey of self-discovery was vital to Bowie. He was consistently clear throughout his life that his songwriting was principally a means for him to carve out his own spiritual path – to ask (and try to answer) his questions about life.

IS THIS BOOK FOR YOU?

In 2002, three decades after he nearly became a Buddhist monk, Bowie told journalist Anthony DeCurtis:

I honestly believe that my initial questions haven’t changed at all. There are fewer of them these days, but they’re really important ones. Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always.

It’s because I’m not quite an atheist – and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on. ‘Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months. I’m almost there.’ … It’s either my saving grace or a major problem that I’m going to have to confront.

‘Almost an atheist’. That’s perhaps where a lot of us find ourselves in the modern world. We reject the idea of God as a big bloke with a white beard living in the clouds, but we can’t quite ever get to the point where we absolutely, definitely don’t believe in anything at all. Like Bowie, we wrestle with the big questions:

Why am I here?

Is this all there is?

What am I supposed to do with my life?

At some points in our lives, when things are particularly tough, the big questions might become more urgent. We might phrase them slightly differently, slightly more brutally:

What’s the point?

Why is life so hard?

What’s wrong with me?

Why can’t I be happy like [insert name of person you know who seems to have life pretty much worked out]?

Are things ever going to go my way?

We each articulate the big questions in our own way: some of us are looking to make some sense of a life that seems to be spinning out of control; others are angry that we haven’t got what we wanted out of life; still others are confused because we have got what we wanted out of life but still don’t seem to be enjoying it. We feel there must be something more to life. Something we don’t quite get. Something we could get, if we only knew where to look for it.

If any of this resonates with you, then The Tao of Bowie is here to help.

We’re a cynical, sceptical lot – us almost atheists – and we’re suspicious of anything that sounds like superstition or mumbo-jumbo, and frankly horrified at some of the things that have been perpetrated in the name of organized religion.

So we’re going to have to set out without the reassuring certainties or explicit commandments of an omniscient deity. What shall we use instead? My suggestion – odd as it may initially sound – is that we use the ideas that Bowie chose to focus on. They are, I contend, an invaluable guide to a life well lived.

By following The Tao (or ‘path’) of Bowie, you can create your own fascinating, rewarding, and eye-opening passage through life.

THE BENEFITS OF FOLLOWING THE TAO OF BOWIE

The ideas explored in this book – and brought to life in the exercises – come from some of the greatest thinkers of the past three thousand years. They are proven over time, and they are validated by modern neuroscience. As a trainer and a coach, I have watched people work through these ideas and seen their transformative power first-hand.

Every reader will follow the path in their own way, and will experience different benefits as a result. But, broadly speaking, if you commit to working through the exercises, you might expect greater happiness and greater purpose in your life.

Let me explain exactly what I mean by those terms.

By ‘happiness’ I mean a combination of the following:

Contentment: a greater ability to be ‘happy for no reason’ rather than pinning your hopes of happiness on external factors that may be outside your control. An ability to feel OK even when things aren’t going your way

Equanimity: an ability to cope better with life’s problems and challenges, without being thrown off balance

Resilience: an ability to flow with the natural change and uncertainty of life

Peace of mind: a healthier relationship with your thoughts (especially the anxious, negative ones) and feelings (especially the uncomfortable ones)

By ‘purpose’ I mean:

Self-awareness: a truer understanding of who you really are – the real you

Belonging: a stronger sense of how you fit into the world

Values: a clearer articulation of what truly matters to you, and a plan for living aligned to those ideas

Meaning: knowing why you are here and how you can benefit those around you

Those readers who already know something about Buddhism or Taoism will appreciate the irony here; both those wisdom traditions would advise against having any expectations of this book – or indeed any expectations of anything.

This is, indeed, wise advice, and we will examine this idea of living with ‘no expectations’ in some detail later in the book. But I know that in our goal-driven, time-starved world, you will want to know what you can expect to get out of The Tao of Bowie. So I offer the list of benefits above, suggesting that you take them as hints to the general direction we’ll be heading in, rather than a precise checklist to be ticked off.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

The Tao of Bowie is divided into ten chapters. Each chapter contains one clear life lesson. Each chapter is sub-divided into three sections.

•Bowie’s path

•The life lesson

•Your path

Bowie’s path focuses on an incident or key theme from David Bowie’s life.

The life lesson explains the wise life lesson that we can learn from this moment.

Your path shows you exactly how to apply this lesson to your own life, through a series of exercises, meditations and techniques.

CHAPTER 1: BEGINNINGS

The life lesson: Start your journey of self-discovery now

One day I walked into the Buddhist Society. I went down the stairs and saw a man in saffron robes. He said, in very broken English, ‘You are looking for me?’ I realized years later that it was a question, but as an eighteen-year-old, I took it as a statement:

‘You are looking for me!’

(David Bowie, 2001)

Who are you?

Where are you?

Where are you going?

(Chime YongDong Rinpoche – the man in the saffron robes)

I teach only the cessation of suffering

(Buddha)

BOWIE’S PATH

Four years before his first hit single, David Bowie began an earnest study of Buddhism that would resonate powerfully throughout his work and life.

The young David Robert Jones, an aspiring but, as yet, completely unsuccessful singer-songwriter arrived on the steps of the Buddhist Society in London in 1965. This was a year before he would change his last name to Bowie, four years before his first hit, ‘Space Oddity’, and seven years before he truly broke through into the national consciousness with his dazzling creation, Ziggy Stardust.

Crucially, it was two years before The Beatles attended Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation seminar in Wales, suddenly and dramatically bringing previously obscure Eastern religions into the spotlight of mainstream popular culture.

When the young David Jones arrived at the Buddhist Society, he was not a wannabe. He was not following some fad that would shine brightly for a few months and then quickly fade. He was carving out his own unique path, one that he would adhere to (in his own way) for the rest of his life.

He had already been interested in Buddhism for some years. His older half-brother, Terry, a huge influence on Bowie in many ways, had introduced him to the work of Jack Kerouac, and the Beats – a literary group who were early Western advocates of Buddhism. Already a voracious reader, David had followed up this initial interest by reading books like Heinrich Harrer’s Seven Years in Tibet and Lobsang Rampa’s The Rampa Story.

The first was informative. Harrer, an Austrian who had escaped from a British POW camp in India, had made his way into Tibet, and the book recounted his life as a tutor to the young Dalai Lama. It offered genuine insight into both Tibet and Buddhism.

The Rampa Story was a bit different. While Lobsang Rampa claimed to be a Tibetan holy man, he was, in fact, an unemployed surgical fitter from Devon called Cyril Hoskin. Of course, there’s no reason why a surgical fitter from Devon cannot impart great wisdom, but Hoskin’s book was a work of fiction.

However, when Bowie entered The Buddhist Society headquarters in 1965, he encountered the real deal. The man with the saffron robes and broken English was Chime YongDong Rinpoche. Born in the remote eastern Tibet region of Kham, and identified at the age of two as a reincarnated lama, he was educated at Benchen monastery from this early age. He was one of a select group of monks who went to China with the Dalai Lama for a fateful visit during which Mao Tse-tung informed them that ‘religion is poison’. Shortly afterwards China began a brutal persecution that saw Buddhist monks and nuns murdered and monasteries (including Benchen) destroyed. In 1959, Chime made his escape via Bhutan to India, eventually making his way to the UK – one of just three Buddhist lamas to do so.

Over the next two years, Chime would become Bowie’s main teacher, during which time Bowie would come to the Buddhist Society to study up to four times a week. The other two escapees who made it to the UK, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Akong Rinpoche, moved to Eskdalemuir in Scotland to set up Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Europe, where Bowie would also study.

Indeed, in 1967 Bowie travelled up to Samye Ling with a clear intention. As he later said, ‘I was within a month of having my head shaved, taking my vows, and becoming a monk.’

Was this a slight exaggeration by Bowie? We can’t be absolutely sure. Certainly there were some points in his career when he was happy to give a provocative quote to journalists in search of a headline; however, when he talked about his spiritual life in interviews he was usually serious and measured. Exactly how determined Bowie was to become a monk we’ll never know. But contemporary friends like Mary Finnigan (Bowie’s landlady for a time) and associates like journalist George Tremlett (who wrote the first biography of Bowie) note that he was extremely earnest in his studies. Indeed, when Bowie was first introduced to rising young producer Tony Visconti – a man who could potentially help his career (and went on to do so) – the pair didn’t talk about studios or demos; they bonded over Buddhism.

Visconti, who has himself retained a lifelong interest in Buddhism, confirms that Bowie’s study of the subject was genuine and deep: ‘David was definitely a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism. He knew it all. He was a very curious person, a fast reader and rarely forgot information once it was stored in his head.’

WHAT BOWIE LEARNED FROM BUDDHISM

Eventually, it was Chime who talked Bowie out of becoming a monk. But this should not be taken as an indication that Bowie’s teacher thought the young man was not serious in his studies. Rather it reflected changing times. Chime often discouraged devoted students of Buddhism from becoming monks or nuns – and both he and Chögyam Trungpa later disrobed – reflecting a belief that, in the West, in the modern world, the idea of isolating yourself in a monastery was outdated and inappropriate.

And even though Bowie chose music over the monastery, there can be no doubting the impact that his studies had on the rest of his life. As he said in 1997, they left him with:

a sense of transience and change which actually became fundamental to my life and my approach to it. Not holding on to anything – not considering that there is anything that will last through one’s entire eternal life – living or dead. And it makes letting go very easy – material things or physical things.

And looking for the source of one’s own being becomes much more important. And I guess that’s been my own personal journey – trying to sort out where my spiritual bounty lies, where my thread to a universal order lies. That can become a life’s search.

The two most important ideas that Bowie took from his Buddhist studies are:

Change: that everything is transient

Looking for the source of one’s own being: that investigating your self – the journey of self-discovery – is supremely important

Of these two, the importance of change to Bowie is the most immediately obvious. He wrote one of his most famous songs about it, ‘Changes’. And his career was a dazzling succession of changes of style and character. But in The Tao of Bowie we will focus on the latter idea, looking at how Bowie undertook his journey of self-discovery and how you can pursue your own journey.

This is by no means an exclusively Buddhist idea. Quite the opposite. The importance of self-investigation is an idea that unites many of the world’s great wisdom traditions, even some of those that often find themselves in conflict with each other. Bowie went on to study many of these other wisdom traditions to refine his own personal spiritual code, which guided him through his struggles to eventual happiness.

Bowie retold the story of his meeting with Chime on several occasions. On one of these, he emphasized that he simply couldn’t have allowed himself to hear Chime’s gentle enquiry ‘You are looking for me?’ as a question. ‘I needed it to be a statement,’ he said. But why was Bowie looking for a guru? Why did he need a guru? Because at the tender age of eighteen, he’d already begun what he would later describe as his ‘daunting spiritual search’. He was already looking for the source of his own being. He knew from his reading that the Buddhist journey of self-discovery could lead him to a place where his life would make more sense, where he would understand more about who he really was and how he fitted into the world. In Chime, he saw a man who might provide him with some answers.

Yet, instead of providing Bowie with answers, in fact, Chime offered him three questions:

Who are you?

Where are you?

Where are you going?

THE LIFE LESSON: START YOUR JOURNEY OF SELF-DISCOVERY NOW

Like Neo in the film The Matrix, our ‘reality’ is not as real as we think. Crucially, our normal sense of ‘self’ – of who we are – is flawed. The journey to discover our true self is at the heart of our ability to live life to the full.

Bowie had encountered an extraordinary human being. As a reincarnate lama, Chime is a venerated Buddhist master who has received transmissions (teachings) that have been handed down personally from teacher to student over many centuries. But, while he may be intricately linked to an ancient tradition, Chime was also pragmatic about his situation in the mid-1960s. Having arrived in a foreign land where his venerated status back in Tibet was utterly irrelevant to 99.9 per cent of the population, he ended up working in a cafe to make ends meet.

He once recalled a conversation with a co-worker in the cafe (who either misheard, misunderstood or deliberately mispronounced his name):

‘So, Jimmy, what is this Buddhism?’

‘Buddhism is the end of suffering.’

‘Oh, Jimmy, I need that Buddhism.’

Well, yes. We could all use a little less suffering.

Buddhism – certainly in its Westernized form – is not a religion in the sense that we commonly understand the word. There is no God to worship, and there are no commandments to follow. It’s much closer to a form of psychology, a method of working with the mind.

In essence, Buddha noted that people tend to suffer, to be unhappy, dissatisfied and disappointed. And he suggested a method for relieving these symptoms. He said it worked for him, and suggested others tried it too.

There are many forms of Buddhism but, because we know his teachers, we can be clear on which version of Buddhism Bowie studied. He was educated in the Kagyu tradition and the absolute heart of this method is meditation. Indeed, the Kagyu lineage is often referred to as ‘the practising lineage’ (‘practice’ being a common term for meditation).

How does meditation help to reduce suffering? By offering a means to self-investigation and self-discovery: a way to form a more accurate understanding of your self and the world around you.

We know from other students that Chime liked to offer people new to the discipline those three questions:

Who are you?

Where are you?

Where are you going?

They may not, at first glance, seem that powerful. But whether you’re interested in Buddhism or not, these are three of the most important questions we can ask ourselves.

As a coach, I encourage my clients to step back from their day-to-day problems, issues and challenges to address these three fundamental questions. The more clearly you can answer them, the more skilfully you will be able to navigate all aspects of your life.

And yet most people hardly spend any time thinking about them at all. As Jim Rohn, the motivational author and speaker known as ‘the godfather of personal development’, once wrote: ‘most people spend more time planning their vacations than they do planning their lives’.

Is that true for you? It quite possibly is.

Now that you think about it, does it seem ever so slightly odd? I think it does. Especially as, down the centuries, a succession of very wise people have advised us of the benefits of self-examination and self-discovery.

As well as in his Buddhist studies, Bowie will have encountered the same idea in his reading of the philosopher Nietzsche and the psychiatrist Carl Jung, and his voracious examination of the Gnostic gospels. And beyond the wisdom traditions that we know Bowie explored, the injunction to ‘know thyself’ is a central idea in many others too, from Socratic philosophy to Confucianism, from Hinduism to the I-Ching, from Christianity (‘The kingdom of Heaven is within you’ – Jesus) to Islam (‘Those who know themselves know their Lord’ – Mohammad).

Whether these traditions are based on the idea of a God – or of many Gods or of no God at all – they all agree that the best thing we can do is to examine our selves. The fact that philosophies and religions that disagree so violently over so many issues all find a place of agreement here must surely mean there is something very special indeed about self-examination.

So why do most of us avoid looking deeply into who we are and tackling the big questions about our lives? Perhaps because we’re all too busy these days to take the time to contemplate such